by John Varley
"Okay. Then why do you want to kill that man in Georgia?" She found herself launched on an explanation of what had been done to her, why it had been done, and that led into an explanation of the peckish power structure and how it operated. It dawned on her that she was speaking to a supposed member of that very power structure. Oddly, she was embarrassed. She had been saying some pretty terrible things, and after all, he had done nothing to her personally. Did that matter? She was no longer sure. "At least I think I know what 'peckish' means now," he said.
"I didn't mean to accuse you of anything," she said. "I'm sure you see it differently because of the way you were brought up, so-"
"Don't be so sure," he said. "I don't admit to any big conspiracy, you understand. If there is one, nobody's invited me to the meetings. And I do think you ... your Coven is operating from an obsolete world picture. If I read you right, you'd agree to that at least partially yourself."
She shrugged, noncommittally. He was right, partially. "When your group cut itself off from the rest of the human race, things might have been as bad as you say. I wasn't around, and I guess if I had been, I would have been part of the oppressor class and think it was the way things should be. But I have been told that things are a lot better now. I won't say they're perfect. Things don't get perfect. But most of the women I know are happy. They don't think there's many battles left to fight."
"You'd better stop there," Robin cautioned. "Most women have always been happy with the way things were, or at least they said so. That goes back to before peckish society allowed women to vote. Just because we of the Coven believe some things that I now know are overstated or incorrect, don't draw the conclusion that we are foolish about everything. We know that the majority is always willing to let things remain as they are until they are led to something better. A slave may not be happy with her lot, but most do nothing to improve it. Most do not believe it can be improved."
He spread his hands and shrugged. "You've got me there. And I wouldn't see oppression because I'd be the benefactor of it. What do you think? How bad does it look to you, as a sort of visitor from another planet?"
"Frankly, it is much better than I had hoped. On the surface anyway. I've had to discard a lot of preconceptions."
"Good for you!" he said. "Most people would rather die than discard a preconception. When Gaby told me about where you came from, the last thing I expected you to have was an open mind. But what do ... uh, peckish women think?"
Robin was feeling an odd mixture of emotions. Most unnerving of all was the fact that she felt pleased that he felt she had an open mind. This in spite of the way he had phrased it, which could be interpreted as an insult to the Coven. The closed, isolated group Gaby had probably described to him would be expected to cling to its own notions fanatically. The Coven was not like that, but it would be hard to explain to him. Robin had been trained to accept the universe as it existed, as she observed it, not to introduce a Finagle factor to make it conform to the equation or even to the doctrine.
It had been easy to discard the notions that males had meter-long penises and that they spent all their time raping women or buying and selling them. (That last was not yet disproved, but if it was happening, it was a subtle bit of social business she had not yet been able to observe.) She faced a disquieting notion: male-as-person. A human being not totally at the mercy of his testosterone, more than just an aggressor penis, but a person one could talk to, who could even understand one's point of view. Following that thought to its logical end took her to an almost unthinkable possibility: male-as-sister.
She realized she had been quiet too long.
"Peckish women? Uh, I really don't know yet. I met a woman who sells her body, though she says that's not the right way to look at it. I don't understand money, so I really can't say if she's right. Gaby and Cirocco are worse than useless in that respect. They have less to do with human society-as you know it-than I do. I have to say I don't know enough of your culture to understand women's role in it."
He was nodding again.
"What's in your bag?" he asked.
"My demon."
"Can I see it?"
"That probably isn't-" But he had already opened the bag. Well, let it be on his own head, she thought. Nasu's bite was painful but not serious.
"A snake!" he cried. He seemed delighted and reached into the bag. "A py-no, an anaconda. One of the nicest ones I've seen, too. What's his ... what's her name?"
"Nasu." She was regretting not saying anything now and wished Nasu would go ahead and bite and get it over with. Robin would then apologize because it was a dirty trick. How was he to know Nasu allowed no one but Robin to handle her?
But he was doing it correctly, showing the proper respect, and damn it if Nasu wasn't coiling around his arm.
"You know something about snakes."
"I've had a few. I worked in a zoo for a year, back when I could still hold a job. Me and snakes get along."
When five minutes went by and Chris still wasn't bitten, Robin had to admit the truth of what he said. And it made her more nervous than ever to see him sitting there with her demon wound around his shoulders. What was she to do? The main function of a demon was to warn one of enemies. Part of her knew that made no more sense than the infallibility granted by her third Eye. It was tradition, no more. She wasn't living in the Stone Age.
But a part of her much deeper than that looked at Chris and the snake and did not know what to do.
18 Wide Awake
Gaby had hoped to get all the way to Aglaia before camping but now saw that was unrealistic. Cirocco was in no shape to continue.
Actually they had not done badly. The Titanides' steady rowing had brought them to the last northward bend before Ophion resumed its generally eastward trend. A driftwood-strewn shelf elbowed into the river's flow and provided a gentle beach for the landing of the canoes. Atop a low bluff was a stand of trees, and it was there the Titanides made camp, with Chris and Robin trying to help but mostly getting in the way.
Gaby judged the rain would continue for several dekarevs. She could have called Gaea and found out for sure-even requested an end to it for good reason. But weather was fairly standardized in Gaea. She had seen a thirty-hour rain follow a two-hectorev heat wave many times, and this looked like one of those. The clouds were low and continuous. To the northwest she could just make out the Place of Winds, the Hyperion terminus of the slanted support cable known as Cirocco's Stairs. The cable vanished into the cloud layer, a vague, deeper darkness, before rising above it somewhere to Gaby's north. She thought she could detect brightness behind the clouds where it hung over them and reflected light into its own massive shadow.
Cirocco's Stairs. She smiled wryly, but without any bitterness. Almost everyone seemed to have forgotten that two people had made that first climb. It did not bother her. She knew that, aside from the highway, she had not left nearly as many marks on this crazy world as Cirocco had.
She walked to the top of the bluff and watched with amusement as Chris and Robin tried to make themselves useful. The Titanides were too polite to refuse most of their offers of help, so things that might have been done in five minutes were taking fifteen. And of course, it was the right thing to do. Chris had not spoken of his background, but he was a city kid aside from a few excursions into Earth's tamed wildernesses. Robin came from a hypercity, no matter that the Coven floor was picturesque crops and cattle. She might never have seen a wild, unplanned thing in her life.
When it came time to cook, however, the Titanides put all four feet down and shooed the young humans away. Titanides cooked almost as well as they sang. For this first day of travel they were digging into the packs and getting items most likely to spoil, the choice morsels brought along to be eaten quickly. They fed the fire and rimmed it with smooth stones, broke out the copper cookware, and did the magical things Titanides could do to turn fresh meat and fish into wonders of improvisation.
Before long the fruits of the
ir labors could be smelled. Gaby sat back and savored the wait, feeling happier than she had in a long time. It took her back to a much simpler meal shared many years ago, when somehow, torn and bruised and with no assurance they would live another day, she and Cirocco had been as close as they would ever be. Now those memories were bittersweet, but she had lived long enough to know one must hold onto the good things to survive. She might have brooded about all the things that had gone wrong between that day and this or worried about Cirocco, who was even now throwing up in her tent and plotting to get her liquor back from Psaltery's saddlebags. Instead, she chose to smell the good food and listen to the soothing sounds of rain mix with the songs of the Titanides and to feel the long-awaited cooling breeze begin to blow from the east.
She was one hundred and three years old, setting off on a trip that, like all her other trips, she might never finish. There were no life-insurance policies in Gaea, not even for the Wizard. Certainly not for the free-lance pest that Gaea tolerated only because she was more reliable than Cirocco.
The thought did not disturb her. She would survive and prosper. There had been a time when her present age would have been impossible to contemplate, but now she knew that centenarians are always young under the skin; she just happened to be fortunate enough to look and feel young as well. In her own case, she was sixteen, in the San Bernardino Mountains, with her telescope and the fire-both built with her own hands-waiting for the sky to darken and the stars to come out. What more could one ask of life?
She knew she was not growing anymore. She no longer expected to. Increasing age, she had found, brings increased experience, knowledge, perspective; it brings many things that one could apparently accumulate forever, but a plateau of wisdom is reached. If she completed her second century, she did not expect to be significantly changed. That had caused her some concern around the time of her eightieth birthday, but she no longer worried about it. The worries of the day were sufficient.
This day held only one worry for her as it drew to a close.
She watched Robin moving around the fire and sighed deeply.
The meal was up to the Titanides' usual high standards but for one literally sour note. Titanide cookery occasionally employed a powerful spice obtained from the crushed and prepared seeds of a watermelon-sized blue fruit. It had an elegant name in Titanide song, but humans generally called it hyperlemon. It was white and granular. A few grains were enough for any recipe.
When the meal was almost ready for dishing out, Psaltery suddenly turned and spit a mouthful of vegetables onto the ground. For a moment his lips were too puckered for speech as the other Titanides looked at him questioningly. He held out a spoon, and Valiha put her tongue to it. She made a face.
It did not take long to discover that a leather bag marked salt actually contained hyperlemon concentrate. The bag had been bought by Hautbois. The conclusion reached after much scandalized discussion among all four Titanides was that the vendor-a reformed tequilaholic named Kithara-had for some reason decided to play a joke on the Wizard's party.
None of the Titanides was amused. Gaby thought it was no big thing, even though a pot of vegetables had to be thrown out. They still had plenty of good salt. A check of other provisions revealed no substitutions. But to a Titanide, ruining good food was a sin. None of them could understand why Kithara had done it.
"I'll be sure to ask him upon our return," Psaltery vowed darkly.
"I would like to be there with you," Valiha said.
"Why make such a fuss?" Gaby wanted to know. "It was a harmless joke. Sometimes you folks get to looking a little somber to me. I'm glad you can make jokes."
"It's not the joke we object to," Hautbois said. "I like them as well as anyone else. But this one was in ... bad taste."
Though the aging process had passed her by, there was one thing about Gaby that had changed as she grew older. She required less sleep than she used to. Two hours out of twenty were generally enough. Often she stayed awake for sixty or even seventy revs with no ill effects.
The Titanides said she was getting more like them every day and soon would entirely lose the disgusting habit.
Whatever the reason for it, she had decided she could get by without sleeping at this camp. She went off by herself, walked by the river for a time, and when she returned, the camp was quiet but for the low, humming songs of the Titanides in rest phase. They sprawled around the fire, four improbably limber comic nightmares, their hands occupied with unimportant tasks, their minds wandering. Valiha was on her side, propped up on one elbow. Hautbois was on her back, her human torso now in line with the rest of her body, her legs curled in the air like a puppy waiting for her belly to be scratched. Of all the things Titanides could do, Gaby thought that was the funniest.
There were four tents pitched among the trees a good distance from the fire. She passed by her own unoccupied shelter. In the second, Cirocco slept uneasily. She had two stiff drinks in her, and an ocean of coffee. Gaby knew it wasn't the coffee that made her toss and turn.
She paused outside Chris's tent and knew it would just be snooping to look inside it. She had no business with Chris. So it was on to the next one in line. She waited outside for several minutes until she heard someone stirring.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Who is that? Gaby?"
"Yeah."
"I guess so. Come on in."
Robin was sitting up on her sleeping bag, which rested on a deep pad of moss put there by Hautbois. Gaby lit the lamp hanging from the ridgepole and saw Robin's eyes glittering alertly but with no particular malice. She was dressed in the clothes she had worn all day.
"Did I disturb you?"
Robin shook her head. "Can't sleep," she admitted. "This is the first time in my life that I've not had a bed to sleep in."
"Hautbois would be happy to get more moss."
"That's not it. I'll get used to it, I suppose."
"It might help if you wore something looser."
Robin held up the elaborately patterned nightgown Hautbois had laid out for her. "It's not my style," she said. "How could anyone sleep in something like that? It ought to be in a display case."
Gaby chuckled, then squatted with one knee on the ground and picked at a cuticle. Robin was looking at her when she glanced up. Might as well get on with it, she thought. She knows you didn't come in to see if she needed fresh towels.
"I guess the first thing is to apologize," she said. "So here it is. I regret what I did, it was not justified, and I'm sorry."
"I accept your apology," Robin said. "But the warning still stands."
"That's fine. I understand that." Gaby was picking her words as carefully as she knew how. Something more than an apology was called for, but she had to be sure she did not appear patronizing.
"What I did was wrong in my culture as well as yours," she said. "The apology was for the violation of my own moral code. But you were telling me about something you witches have, some system of obligations, and the word has slipped my mind."
"Labra," Robin said.
"That's it. I don't pretend to understand it all. I think I can be sure I violated it, though, even if I'm not sure just how. What I'm asking for now is your help. Is there a way to set things right between us? Is there anything I can do to make it like it never happened?"
Robin was frowning. "I don't think you want to get into-"
"But I do. I'm willing to do quite a bit. Is there anything?"
"Y-e-e-s. But-"
"What?"
Robin threw up her hands. "Much like any primitive culture, I suppose. A duel. Just the two of us."
"How serious a duel?" Gaby asked. "To the death?"
"We're not that primitive. The purpose is reconciliation, not murder. If I thought you needed killing, I'd just do it and hope my sisters would back me up when the tribunal came around. We would fight bare-handed."
Gaby considered it. "What if I won?"
Robin gave an exasperated sigh.<
br />
"You don't understand. The winner isn't important, not in that sense. We wouldn't be trying to prove which is the better woman. The fight would only prove who is the stronger and quicker, and that has nothing to do with honor. But by agreeing to fight with a provision not to kill each other, we each acknowledge the other as a worthy, and thus honorable opponent." She paused and for a moment looked quite wicked. "Don't worry about it," she said. "You wouldn't win."
Gaby matched her grin and once again found herself liking this strange child. More than ever she wanted her solidly on her side when trouble started.
"How about it then? Am I worth fighting?"
Robin took a long time answering. Many things had occurred to Gaby since the fight was proposed. She wondered how many of them Robin was considering now. Should she let Robin win? That might be hazardous if Robin suspected she was not fighting wholeheartedly. If Robin did lose, would she really bury the hatchet? Gaby had to take her word for that. She thought she understood the little witch well enough to know her concept of honor would not have allowed her to suggest it if she could not behave as advertised. So the fight would be serious and probably painful.
"If that's the way you want it," Robin said.
Robin was taking off her clothes, so Gaby did the same. They were half a kilometer from the river, far enough to make the campfire just a dim light seen through pouring rain. The field of combat was a shallow depression in the rolling land. There was little grass, but the dirt was firm enough: heat-baked ground only beginning to soak up moisture after six hours of steady rain. Still, the footing would not be good. In places there were puddles and mud.
They faced each other, and Gaby sized up her opponent. They were a close match. Gaby had a few centimeters in height and a few kilos in mass.
"Are there any forms we should observe? Any rituals?"
"Yes, but they're complex, and they wouldn't mean anything to you, so why don't we just dispense with them? Mumbo jumbo and alagazam, you bow to me and I bow to you, and we'll consider the rituals satisfied, okay?"
